A few condition issues can be heard on side one so those looking for especially quiet pressings should probably pass on this one

"Cole enthusiastically performs 11 songs from My Fair Lady, and not only sings the tunes, but in a few cases has spoken monologues in which he acts out the parts of Henry Higgins and Alfred Doolittle."

At the start of track two on side one there are 3 pops, followed later by 5 thuds.

This vintage pressing has the kind of Tubey Magical Midrange that modern records cannot even BEGIN to reproduce. Folks, that sound is gone and it sure isn't showing any sign of coming back.

Having done this for so long, we fully understand and appreciate that rich, natural, Tubey Magical sound is key to the presentation of this primarily vocal music. We rate these qualities higher than others we might be listening for (e.g., bass definition, soundstage, depth, etc.). The music is not so much about the details in the recording, but rather in trying to recreate solid, palpable, real people singing and playing live in your listening room. The best copies had an uncanny way of doing just that.

If you exclusively play modern repressings of vintage recordings, I can say without fear of contradiction that you have never heard this kind of sound on vinyl. Old records have it -- not often, and certainly not always -- but less than one out of 100 new records do, if our experience with the hundreds we've played can serve as a guide.

What to Listen For (WTLF)

Copies with rich lower mids and nice extension up top (to keep the strings from becoming shrill) did the best in our shootout, assuming they weren't veiled or smeary of course. So many things can go wrong on a record! We know, we've heard them all.

Top end extension is critical to the sound of the best copies. Lots of old records (and new ones) have no real top end; consequently the studio or stage will be missing much of its natural air and space, and instruments will lack their full complement of harmonic information. Strings and brass with get shrill and congested without enough top end air to breathe.

Tube smear is common to most pressings from the '50s and '60s and this is no exception. The copies that tend to do the best in a shootout will have the least (or none), yet are full-bodied, tubey and rich. (Full sound is especially critical to the horns; any blare, leanness or squawk ruins much of the fun, certainly at the loud levels the record should be playing at.)

Nat Is The Man

We're always on the lookout for Nat King Cole records with good sound. In our experience finding them is not nearly as easy as one might think. Far too many of his recordings are drenched in bad reverb, with sound that simply can't be taken seriously -- fine for old consoles but not so good on modern audiophile equipment.

At least one we know of has his voice out of phase with the orchestra on most copies, which put a quick end to any hope of finishing the shootout we had started.

If anything the sound on his albums gets even worse in the '60s. Many of Nat's albums from that decade are over-produced, bright, thin and shrill.

We assume most audiophiles got turned on to his music from the records that Steve Hoffman remixed and remastered for DCC back in the mid-'90s, For those of you who were customers of ours back then, you know that I count myself among that group. I even went so far as to nominate the DCC of Nat's Greatest Hits as the best album DCC ever made. I know now, as I expect you do, that that's really not saying much, but at the time I thought it was a pretty bold statement.

Devoting the Resources

Having long ago given up on Heavy Vinyl LPs by DCC and others of their persuasion -- we call it Setting a Higher Standard -- these days we are in a much better position to devote our resources to playing every Nat King Cole album on every pressing we can get our hands on, trying to figure out what are the copies -- from what era, on what label, with what stampers, cut by whom, stereo or mono, import or domestic -- that potentially have the Hot Stamper sound, the very Raison d'être of our business.

We have to play each and every one of the records we've cleaned for our shootout anyway, whether we think it's potentially the best pressing or not. There is no other way to do it. Right Stamper, Wrong Sound is an undeniable reality in the world of records. It's not unheard of for the same stampers to win a shootout, do moderately well on another copy and then come in dead last on a third.

TRACK LISTING

Side One

With A Little Bit Of Luck
I Could Have Danced All Night
The Rain In Spain
On The Street Where You Live
I'm An Ordinary Man

Side Two

Get Me To The Church On Time
Show Me
I've Grown Accustomed To Her Face
You Did It
Wouldn't It Be Loverly
Hymn To Him

AMG Review

This interesting LP features singer Nat King Cole near the end of his life; he only had two more albums left. Joined by an orchestra and a vocal group, the Merry Young Souls, conducted by Ralph Carmichael, Cole enthusiastically performs 11 songs from My Fair Lady, and not only sings the tunes, but in a few cases has spoken monologues in which he acts out the parts of Henry Higgins and Alfred Doolittle. At the height of his fame, the vocalist clearly enjoyed this project, which is really of greater interest to fans of the show than to Cole's earlier jazz followers.

Mint Minus Minus and maybe a bit better is about as quiet as any vintage pressing will play, and since only the right vintage pressings have any hope of sounding good on this album, that will most often be the playing condition of the copies we sell. (The copies that are even a bit noisier get listed on the site are seriously reduced prices or traded back in to the local record stores we shop at.)

Those of you looking for quiet vinyl will have to settle for the sound of later pressings and Heavy Vinyl reissues, purchased elsewhere of course as we have no interest in selling records that don't have the vintage analog magic of these wonderful originals.

If you want to make the trade-off between bad sound and quiet surfaces with whatever Heavy Vinyl pressing might be available, well, that's certainly your prerogative, but we can't imagine losing what's good about this music -- the size, the energy, the presence, the clarity, the weight -- just to hear it with less background noise.